Almost 27 years after Joy Gardner’s death at the hands of the Met Police’s Alien Deportation Group (ADG), campaigners are petitioning national broadcasters to televise a documentary exploring the circumstances of the Crouch End woman’s death and her family’s fight for justice.
She died after, at about 7am on July 28, 1993, five police officers broke in to her Topsfield Avenue home and used force – and 13 feet of tape and a belt– to restrain her.
The officers had been members of a the now-disbanded ADG, which was tasked with arresting Joy ahead of a planned deportation.
In 1995, three were acquitted of manslaughter charges, and there has never been an inquest into Joy’s death.
READ MORE: ‘She is a martyr’: 25 years on, Joy Gardner’s mother is still fighting for justice after death in custodyInjustice, a 2001 film by Ken Fero and Tariq Memood, documents the Joy’s case, and those of others who have died in police custody.
In light of the petition, which has more than 6,400 signatures, Ken told this newspaper: “I think we’d really welcome this. We think the time is right for Channel 4 to show the film. It’s fully in the public interest.”
The filmmaker, a friend of Joy’s family, is part of the United Friends and Family Campaign (UFFC), who have spent decades seeking justice for those killed in custody.
What the film makes clear is that this has been going on not just for the last thirty years but long before that. It’s shocking that broadcasters haven’t taken the opportunity to show it.”
The Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw called Injustice “the most important British documentary of my professional lifetime”.
Ken is also working on a follow-up film called UV that’s set to completed this autumn.
This petition comes after Haringey Council announced plans to name a to-be-built block after Joy Gardner in late June.
Speaking to the Ham&High in 2018, Joy’s mother Myrna said: “Joy was just an ordinary person – she wasn’t a criminal. She was just a mother of two children.
“They say she was ‘illegal’, but she wasn’t illegal. She came here legally, she paid her fare.”
Channel Four have not responded to this newspaper’s request for comment.
To sign the petition, visit change.org/p/channel-4-channel-4-screen-injustice-film-about-black-deaths-in-uk-police-custody
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